That seems high for a recommended requirement. “Recommended” means “would actually be fun to play at rather than the minimum reqs which is going to technically run but be horrible”, right? At least that’s how I’ve understood it since the 90s.
So, what kind of whizzes and bangs can we expect if we have an upper-level GPU? Anything like PhysX or VXGI?
Minimum CPU: Intel Core i5-2300 2.8 GHz/AMD Phenom II X4 945 3.0 GHz or equivalent
I’m wondering what having a faster CPU would improve here. I’m not doubting that it would improve something but genuinely curious.
Minimum & recommended RAM: 8GB
What does it imply that the minimum and recommended RAM are the same? I mean the implications in terms of playing the game; The implication that a big game is console-first is routine enough.
You don’t have to have the dog as a companion or you can tell him to stay home.
I was pretty disappointed in the SPECIAL cartoon for Intelligence…to me it was the weakest so far, and fell pretty flat. I always go fairly high intelligence and perception, so was hoping for a better video on this.
Yeah, these are the actual ones. I have almost exactly the minimum specs and I kinda wonder what that means - solid fps with low/medium settings, I hope. Will have to wait and see until after launch and then search youtube for a video of somebody playing with a 550 Ti.
I can’t say I really blame you - the whole “let’s gouge our most loyal customers for $60+30+15+15+15+15, then sell all of that for $30 to the folks who don’t like us as much” setup of the video game market is annoying.
I’d rather see the “game of the year” edition going to the pre-orders, the “season pass” being available for a limited time after launch, and the piecemeal DLCs for the folks who waited for the discount bin.
The actual results of recommended and minimum requirements varies so much from game to game that you’re better off just waiting for official benchmarks. They are next to useless on their own.
The Battlefront beta’s minim reqs get you 60 FPs at 1080p, medium settings. Still looks great and runs great, while recommended nets you Ultra at 1440p 60 FPS.
On the other hand Batman Arkham Knights minimum were 30 FPS with drops on low, and recommended, even after the performance patch netted you 50FPS with drops on normal (medium) settings.
And I take the opposite view. Pre-orders are a really dumb idea in the age of digital distribution. They’re basically a way to sell hype and build up brand loyalty regardless of whether the final product is a piece of crap or not. People who jump on those bandwagons deserve to be gouged, I think.
If more people waited for the cheap, complete editions rather than ravenously consume every scrap of hacky DLC the market would be a whole lot better.
Why, by all the AAA-studios going bankrupt, of course!
I won’t say that games aren’t overpriced…the Steam sales pretty much prove you can move a LOT more product at a discount. And 10x sales at 1/3 the margin is still an improvement.
But since the backers generally only look at the first month’s sales/profits to determine success or failure, waiting until the price falls significantly only hurts the developers, not the producers who control the price.
Yeah, I generally take the view that the games that are most important to me I put my money down right away. Really, I’ve only been seriously hosed by this a handful of times: Pools of Radiance II and Lands of Lore 3 stand out. I’m grateful that I never did jump into the Star Citizen boondoggle, but it does look like Broken Age barely scrapped by in delivering on its promises.
But I do reminisce fondly about the days when you could get an actual physical prize for pre-ordering. I could have had an Ice Giant miniature with Icewind Dale. Of course, I could just buy one now, but that’s not the point. It burns, still to this day. Plus, if I recall correctly, Baldur’s Gate II was the one where you could get the +5 sling that never ran out of ammo, but the tiny file contained on the pre-order bonus disc was immediately shared around the world. That in my mind set the tone for digital pre-order bonuses for all time.
I am booked and bound for the full Pipboy edition of Fallout 4, just as I purchased the Pipboy edition of Fallout 3 back in the day. Let me tell you about what I got back then: The Fallout 3 Pipboy is just a digital clock with 3 buttons. It doesn’t look like the one in the advertisement, because nobody bothered to paint it. It’s green plastic colored. The buttons that are supposed to be red are clear. The clock itself is functional, but I don’t run it off of batteries, because it eats batteries. I rigged it to run off of an old Sony Discman charger that happens to put out 4.5 vdc. I have to adjust it every couple of weeks because it loses time. But I’m glad to have it. I like it more than I would have ever liked that stupid dragon statue that came with the Skyrim collector’s edition or the Cartman statue for the Stick of Truth. I don’t mind making room for it. And I got it from way overpaying for a pre-order.
But if your pre-order only gets you virtual gimmicks, bend over. Better will be available from the mod scene shortly. Soundtrack? I assume there must be people who give a shit about that, but I can’t seem to. If I find myself desiring to hear a track outside the game, I usually find it on YouTube. Digital concept art book? Physical concept art book? Better come with an N7 velcro patch.
There are a number of good games that I only bought when they were available for sale on Steam or GoG. They were good, but just not a priority. The Arkham games are a good example. I’ll play them on Easy when I can buy them cheap. Otherwise, I pay first-release prices for the games that mean the most to me, even if I’m bitter when just after buying $40 worth of DLC for Dragon Age they release the whole package cheaper that what I paid just for the DLC, because they never did that with Dragon Age II or Mass Effect 3, so I assumed that it had just become against EA policy. Fuckers. Still, I did vote with my dollars even if I got reamed for it.
PS4 is going, or just dropped down to $349 with a game bundled in too. You can bet Microsoft has to respond. I wouldn’t be super surprised to see bundles going for $300 or close to that.
Of course my personal suggestion is you pick up a small form factor PC and play the best version of the game instead
I would love to do just that…and if you can configure me a complete PC for $400 that will perform appreciably better than a console, I’ll do expactly that!
I had considered waiting a year or more for hardware to get cheaper, but i might not be able to handle that.
Yeah, it’s going to look ok even on a console. Probably good enough for me.
I’m looking forward to the story, and enhancements to gameplay more that the graphics anyway.
Right now $400 PC gets you only a little bit better performance than a PS4, but a definitive performance edge over an Xbone. $500 is the sweet spot for really expecting games that only run at 900p/1080p 30FPS on a PS4 to run at 1080p 60 with better graphics options.
But you should be able to find great sales over the holidays to bring that prce down.
Also, it’s not just about graphics, although that certainly helps immersion in RPG’s like these, it’s about performance. 60 FPS improves not just the smoothness of animations (and again contributes to immersion) but also gameplay. Most importantly though, for a game like this, will be mods. I have a feeling that they will surpass the mod scene on Skyrim in quality and number.
I agree that this is one area where PC has a definite advantage. How many months/years did it take for the really good Skyrim mods to come out after its release?
If it’s not too long, I might wait to buy F4 until it’s been significantly improved by the community.
Some really cool UI and graphics overhauls were available within the first month. Utility mods that helped improve certain rough aspects of gameplay too. Within a few months there were also really cool new meshes: from new clothing/armor/weapons, to new homes you could use as your base of operations.
Larger, more ambitious mods took several months though - things like new adventures/quests new NPC’s, better AI for dragons and monsters, bug fixes, large terrain and texture overhauls, etc.
To my out-of-touch console-owning eyes it seems quite weird that in a game anticipation thread, there’s so much talk of modding. I’m wishing the weeks away just to see what could be a great, gorgeous game - while the PC owners are already looking even further ahead to a custom-built version. But then, I find that I can’t suspend my disbelief with any additions beyond the initial game - even DLC doesn’t seem ‘real’ within the game’s universe. And I’m aware that’s my problem.
